Job applications from federal workers surge 50% as staff targeted by DOGE run for the exits

• Job applications from federal workers targeted by DOGE cuts surged by 50% between January and February, according to an analysis from the job site Indeed, which found that highly educated workers are especially likely to be targeted. The data is an early indication of the scale of impact federal layoffs have had in the private job market and will have going forward in 2025 

The Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to government cuts is reverberating in the job market, with applications from targeted workers surging 50% from January to February, according to new data from job site Indeed.

Applications to jobs from federal workers in agencies targeted by DOGE — which includes departments like the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture, or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau— were 75% higher in February than their baseline level in 2022, the research showed. The DOGE threat appears most acute for highly educated workers: some 68% of feds actively looking for a new job on Indeed last month had at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to just over a third of all federal workers. 

That suggests the DOGE cuts are disproportionately targeting workers with advanced degrees who are looking to cover their bases by securing new employment before being pushed out. (Indeed’s data can’t yet distinguish between workers searching for jobs preemptively or after they were fired.)

“It’s a massive shift,” Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told Fortune. 

While it’s common for the federal workforce to churn a little bit as presidential administrations change, this level of turnover is unprecedented. “There hasn’t been this type of an increase in search intensity in any other presidential administration shift for which we have data,” Stahle said. “Seeing that large spike was really astounding.”

Searches for specialized job titles that are common in federal employment, such as “policy analyst,” “contract specialist,” or “compliance” also surged, with policy analyst searches among federal workers up tenfold from a year ago. “Employee relations” searches were up by a factor of 13, while “horticulture” increased by a factor of 27—probably an indicator of displaced USDA workers looking for specialized jobs, Indeed posited. 

The Indeed data is one of the earliest numerical indicators of the shift that federal worker cuts are having on the job market. The February employment report showed federal jobs dropping by 10,000 from January, but the figure is backward-looking, and doesn’t include any worker who lost their job after the middle of the month. Unemployment claims, too, have remained steady nationally, although they have surged in the District of Columbia, rising to their highest level since 2021 in the week of March 8.

These early indicators “offer some clue as to the size of the potential influx of new workers into a so-far largely stable, but also gradually weakening, national job market,” Indeed wrote.

The profile of workers seeking employment is a cause for concern since the overall white-collar job market has cooled dramatically since last year. 

“The influx of educated workers into the market is coming at a time when job postings for those workers have pulled back,” Stahle said. “You have this friction of educated people looking for work at a time when there are fewer opportunities for their experiences.” 

As Fortune has previously reported, many displaced workers, particularly those who specialize in hard sciences, could have trouble finding equivalent work in the private sector, and may end up taking work for which they are overqualified. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com